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The world held its breath last week when Mars Science Laboratory Curiosity discovered an object that appeared to be both bright and metallic. We can now report that the object was in fact a half-inch piece of plastic (pictured below), and most likely a bit of debris from Curiosity’s EDL (entry, descent, landing) on Mars. The plastic most likely fell off the sky crane and onto the top of Curiosity during landing, and then later fell to the floor.

In other news, though, Curiosity has now actually discovered a bunch of “bright particles” on the surface of Mars, that are actually from Mars. Over the last week, Curiosity has been scooping soil samples (or “bites” in NASA nomenclature) from the Rocknest site on Mars. In these small holes, a bunch of small, bright particles have been found. Originally NASA thought they might be of the same provenance as the piece of plastic, but its scientists have now assessed these particles as “Martian material.” It is not yet known what these bright particles actually are, but they are probably small flecks of crystalline material — perhaps silica.

Curiosity has now taken three bites out of Mars with its scoop. While the first two scoops were discarded, the contents of the third scoop were sieved, and then a small portion of sample (“about as much material as in a baby aspirin,” says NASA) was gobbled up by Curiosity’s on-board Chemical and Mineralogy (CheMin) laboratory. CheMin, which uses X-ray diffraction to analyze the composition of samples, is a key instrument for Curiosity’s two-year prime mission to visit and analyze the base of Mount Sharp. Assuming this first test of CheMin checks out, NASA will probably then try out the other on-board lab, Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM).

NASA isn’t clear about whether CheMin’s first sample contains some of the unidentified bright particles — but if it does, we should know more about their composition in the next few days.

Finally, here’s a few more photos to bring you up to speed on Curiosity’s latest activities on the surface of the Red Planet.

An animated GIF showing two angles of the bit of plastic, found on the surface of Mars (now believed to be a bit of debris from Curiosity itself)

Curiosity tries out its ‘observation tray’ for the first time. It’s easier to image particles when they’re on a calibrated background, instead of on the ground.

This is an ultra-high-res shot of a depression caused by one of Curiosity’s wheels, taken by MAHLI. The largest soil grains are about 1-2mm across. This image is actually the result of merging together 8 different photos taken at slightly different focuses, for increased detail.

I guess it’s just there’s quite a lot of shadow in the image. And the quickly flipping between the two probably merges the images in your brain — which is all that 3D is, anyway.

Will Mills

lol I realize stills are 2D. Some 2D pictures just look 3D because of the lighting, quality of the picture, and so on. I was just wondering if the flipping tricks your brain to appear more 3D looking then they really are (which is what you guess as well).

I was simply asking if the not gif versions of the pictures are as stunning.

But yeah, good question. There might be some inherent quality to the images that makes them look more 3D. It’s incredibly close-up, for a start — like, the entire image covers a piece of ground that’s just a couple of inches across, or so.

VirtualMark

It’s amazing to look at these images, even though they’re just pictures of dirt. The fact that they’re from millions of miles away on an alien world is just awesome. Can’t wait to see what’s next.

Nope. It has a ton of b/w Navcams (lower resolution), but the others are colour cameras, afaik. They don’t need colour for navigation — just contrast.

They definitely need colour cameras to work out what they’re looking at :)

MikeTen

Why is it that humans have to litter and pollute wherever we go? Next Curiosity will find a empty soda can or fast food bag….

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